For the same reason why aero-recon lenses for BIG roll film back in the day used fixed LARGE aperture lenses with LONG focal lengths. When focused at or near infinity, large aperture works, and works good enough to do high definition military intelligence recon.
As sheet film grows so does problem with lens options, lens availability and $, problems with depth of field-depth of focus grows with the exception of images at infinity focus. Specifically to 8x10 a larger film formats where one of the constant struggles is with DOF-F, lens choices, film flatness and more..
We have batted this about more than once Drew and the replies continue to repeat much the same. It seems we have been at this LF stuff for about as many decades.. over that time we have figured out what works for our image making needs. There was a time when 8x10 with apertures smaller than f32 were the thing for me. Since then, moved on to 5x7 with all the optical advantages of that smaller format. Adding to this was using the largest possible taking aperture mixed with careful use of camera movements to achieve absolute focus control.
LF image making is not always about everything in SHARP focus or actually apparently sharp focus as any lens has a single true point of focus.
There was a time when the Group f64 mind set was doctrine and ideology, since then I'm no longer a believe in the Group f64 doctrine-idealogy as exampled in soft focus, selective focus and more offers a broader variety of expressive image making possibilities.
As for lenses, the variety available to use for image making is not small.
Bernice
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